Fibrous tissue wounds, such as muscle, ligament, and cartilage tears, can be repaired arthroscopically using sutures. Traditionally, to close a fibrous tissue wound, a surgeon would insert two suture needles into the tissue with sutures attached, thread the sutures across the wound, and then tie knots to fix the free ends of the sutures within the tissue. To simplify the wound closure procedure and to improve fixation, various types of suture anchors have been developed. In one example of a suture anchor, one end of a suture is fixed to a resiliently-deformable, bar-shaped suture anchor. The anchor is loaded into the bore of a hollow needle and deployed into or against the fibrous tissue. The surgeon then threads the suture across the wound and tensions a free end of the suture to pull the wound closed. When the surgeon tensions the suture, the anchor becomes oriented transversely to the suture hole, anchoring the suture in place.
More than one anchor can also be deployed using a single hollow needle, rather than two separate needles. However, an issue arises when the two anchors are placed together inside of a needle. The needle actuator may push both anchors outside of the needle simultaneously, when what is desired is to have the two anchors deploy separately. Conventional approaches require precision when disposing the actuator inside of the needle so as not to prematurely release the second anchor.